Trump could avoid trial this year on 2020 election charges. Is the hush money case a worthy proxy?

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By GARY FIELDS (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump faces serious charges in two cases over whether he attempted to subvert the Constitution by overturning the results of a fair election and illegally remain in power.

Yet it’s a New York case centered on payments to silence an adult film actor that might provide the only legal reckoning this year on whether the Republican tried to undermine a pillar of American democracy.

Trump is charged in the hush money case with trying to falsify business records, but it was hard to tell that as the trial opened Monday.

Lead prosecutor Matthew Colangelo wasted little time during opening statements tying the case to Trump’s campaigning during his first run for the presidency. He said the payments made to Stormy Daniels amounted to “a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election.”

Whether the jury accepts that connection will be pivotal for Trump’s fate. The presumptive GOP nominee faces charges related to falsifying business records that would typically be misdemeanors unless the alleged act could be tied to another crime. Prosecutors were able to charge them as felonies because they allege that the false records were part of an effort to cover up state and federal election law violations — though that’s still not the type of direct election interference that Trump is charged with elsewhere.

Trump has referred to the New York trial and the three other criminal cases against him as a form of election interference, suggesting without evidence that they’re part of a Democratic plan to undermine his campaign to return to the White House.

“I’m here instead of being able to be in Pennsylvania and Georgia and lots of other places campaigning, and it’s very unfair,” he told reporters before Monday’s court session.

While the charges are felonies, the New York case is seen as the least consequential against the former president. In the two election cases, Trump is accused of more direct involvement in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

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He faces a four-count federal indictment in Washington in connection with his actions in the run-up to the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. He and others were charged in Georgia with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law by scheming to illegally overturn his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him in those cases and a fourth charging him with mishandling classified documents.

All the other cases are tied up in appeals that are expected to delay any trials until after the November election. If that happens, the New York case will stand as the only legal test during the campaign of whether Trump attempted to illegally manipulate an election — and the case isn’t even about the election results he tried to overthrow.

On Monday, Trump’s attorney quickly moved to undercut the idea that a case in which the charges center on record-keeping could seriously be considered an effort to illegally undermine an election.

“I have a spoiler alert: There’s nothing wrong with trying to influence an election. It’s called democracy,” said his attorney, Todd Blanche. “They put something sinister on this idea, as if it’s a crime. You’ll learn it’s not.”

Some legal experts monitoring the cases against Trump said they were skeptical of connecting the payments to a form of “election interference.” Doing so also runs the risk of diminishing the gravity of the other charges in the public mind.

Richard Painter, a University of Minnesota Law School professor and former associate White House counsel during the George W. Bush administration, said he believed the facts of the case met the evidence needed to determine whether a felony had been committed that violated campaign law, but added, “The election interference part, I have a little bit of trouble on this.”

Richard Hasen, a UCLA law school professor, said the New York case does not compare to the other election-related charges Trump faces.

“We can draw a fairly bright line between attempting to change vote totals to flip a presidential election and failing to disclose embarrassing information on a government form,” he wrote in a recent Los Angeles Times column.

In an email, Hasen said New York prosecutors were calling the case election interference “because that boosts what may be the only case heard before the election.”

Some said prosecutors’ decision to characterize the New York case as election interference seemed to be a strategy designed to raise its visibility.

“When (Manhattan District Attorney) Alvin Bragg calls it an election interference case, that’s more of a public relations strategy,” said Paul Butler, a professor at Georgetown Law and former federal prosecutor. “I think there was concern that people were looking at the other prosecutions and they weren’t discussing the Manhattan case.”

Declaring the case a hush money trial made it seem less important than the others and “so they’ve styled it … as a case about election interference. But again, what he’s charged with is falsifying business records.”

Trump has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels and his lawyers argue that the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses.

The key question in the prosecution’s argument is why were the business records falsified, said Chris Edelson, an American University assistant professor of government. Their allegation is that “Trump was preventing voters from making an informed decision in the election.”

It’s an argument he believes prosecutors can make. “I think that the prosecutors will have to explain this to the jury. I don’t think it’s impossible to do,” he said.

The New York trial revolves around allegations of a $130,000 payment that Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer, made to Daniels to prevent her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump from becoming public in the final days of the 2016 race.

“Candidates want to suppress bad news about them. But there’s a difference between trying to limit people knowing about that information and about breaking the law to keep them from finding out,” said Andrew Warren, a former state attorney in Florida who was suspended by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and is running for his old office while his court battle continues.

Warren said he believes the case has always been about more than the payments. If it is accepted as a hush money case, “Trump wins,” he said. “If there was intent to deceive the voters, the prosecution wins.”

US government agrees to $138.7M settlement over FBI’s botching of Larry Nassar assault allegations

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By ED WHITE (Associated Press)

DETROIT (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department announced a $138.7 million settlement Tuesday with more than 100 people who accused the FBI of grossly mishandling allegations of sexual assault against Larry Nassar in 2015 and 2016, a critical time gap that allowed the sports doctor to continue to prey on victims before his arrest.

When combined with other settlements, $1 billion now has been set aside by various organizations to compensate hundreds of women who said Nassar assaulted them under the guise of treatment for sports injuries.

Nassar worked at Michigan State University and also served as a team doctor at Indianapolis-based USA Gymnastics. He’s now serving decades in prison for assaulting female athletes, including medal-winning Olympic gymnasts.

Acting Associate Attorney General Benjamin Mizer said Nassar betrayed the trust of those in his care for decades, and that the “allegations should have been taken seriously from the outset.”

“While these settlements won’t undo the harm Nassar inflicted, our hope is that they will help give the victims of his crimes some of the critical support they need to continue healing,” Mizer said of the agreement to settle 139 claims.

The Justice Department has acknowledged that it failed to step in. For more than a year, FBI agents in Indianapolis and Los Angeles had knowledge of allegations against him but apparently took no action, an internal investigation found.

FBI Director Christopher Wray was contrite — and very blunt — when he spoke to survivors at a Senate hearing in 2021. The assault survivors include decorated Olympians Simone Biles, Aly Raisman and McKayla Maroney.

“I’m sorry that so many different people let you down, over and over again,” Wray said. “And I’m especially sorry that there were people at the FBI who had their own chance to stop this monster back in 2015 and failed.”

After a search, investigators said in 2016 that they had found images of child sex abuse and followed up with federal charges against Nassar. Separately, the Michigan attorney general’s office handled the assault charges that ultimately shocked the sports world and led to an extraordinary dayslong sentencing hearing with gripping testimony about his crimes.

“I’m deeply grateful. Accountability with the Justice Department has been a long time in coming,” said Rachael Denhollander of Louisville, Kentucky, who is not part of the latest settlement but was the first person to publicly step forward and detail abuse at the hands of Nassar.

“The unfortunate reality is that what we are seeing today is something that most survivors never see,” Denhollander told The Associated Press. “Most survivors never see accountability. Most survivors never see justice. Most survivors never get restitution.”

Michigan State University, which was also accused of missing chances over many years to stop Nassar, agreed to pay $500 million to more than 300 women and girls who were assaulted. USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee made a $380 million settlement.

Mick Grewal, an attorney who represented 44 people in claims against the government, said the $1 billion in overall settlements speaks to “the travesty that occurred.”

___

Associated Press reporters Mike Householder in Detroit; Dylan Lovan in Louisville, Kentucky; and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington, D.C., contributed to this story.

___

For more updates on the cases against Larry Nasser: https://apnews.com/hub/larry-nassar

America’s child care crisis is holding back moms without college degrees

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By MORIAH BALINGIT and SHARON LURYE of The Associated Press and DANIEL BEEKMAN of The Seattle Times

AUBURN, Wash. (AP) — After a series of lower-paying jobs, Nicole Slemp finally landed one she loved. She was a secretary for Washington’s child services department, a job that came with her own cubicle, and she had a knack for working with families in difficult situations.

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Slemp expected to return to work after having her son in August. But then she and her husband started looking for child care – and doing the math. The best option would cost about $2,000 a month, with a long wait list, and even the least expensive option would cost around $1,600, still eating up most of Slemp’s salary. Her husband earns about $35 an hour at a hose distribution company. Between them, they earned too much to qualify for government help.

“I really didn’t want to quit my job,” says Slemp, 33, who lives in a Seattle suburb. But, she says, she felt like she had no choice.

The dilemma is common in the United States, where high-quality child care programs are prohibitively expensive, government assistance is limited, and daycare openings are sometimes hard to find at all. In 2022, more than 1 in 10 young children had a parent who had to quit, turn down or drastically change a job in the previous year because of child care problems. And that burden falls most on mothers, who shoulder more child-rearing responsibilities and are far more likely to leave a job to care for kids.

Even so, women’s participation in the workforce has recovered from the pandemic, reaching historic highs in December 2023. But that masks a lingering crisis among women like Slemp who lack a college degree: The gap in employment rates between mothers who have a four-year degree and those who don’t has only grown.

For mothers without college degrees, a day without work is often a day without pay. They are less likely to have paid leave. And when they face an interruption in child care arrangements, an adult in the family is far more likely to take unpaid time off or to be forced to leave a job altogether, according to an analysis of Census survey data by The Associated Press in partnership with the Education Reporting Collaborative.

In interviews, mothers across the country shared how the seemingly endless search for child care, and its expense, left them feeling defeated. It pushed them off career tracks, robbed them of a sense of purpose, and put them in financial distress.

Women like Slemp challenge the image of the stay-at-home mom as an affluent woman with a high-earning partner, said Jessica Calarco, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“The stay-at-home moms in this country are disproportionately mothers who’ve been pushed out of the workforce because they don’t make enough to make it work financially to pay for child care,” Calarco said.

Her own research indicates three-quarters of stay-at-home moms live in households with incomes less than $50,000, and half have household incomes of less than $25,000.

Still, the high cost of child care has upended the careers of even those with college degrees.

When Jane Roberts gave birth in November, she and her husband, both teachers, quickly realized sending baby Dennis to day care was out of the question. It was too costly, and they worried about finding a quality provider in their hometown of Pocatello, Idaho.

The school district has no paid medical or parental leave, so Roberts exhausted her sick leave and personal days to stay home with Dennis. In March, she returned to work and husband Mike took leave. By the end of the school year, they’ll have missed out on a combined nine weeks of pay. To make ends meet, they’ve borrowed money against Jane’s life insurance policy.

In the fall, Roberts won’t return to teaching. The decision was wrenching. “I’ve devoted my entire adult life to this profession,” she said.

For low- and middle-income women who do find child care, the expense can become overwhelming. The Department of Health and Human Services has defined “affordable” child care as an arrangement that costs no more than 7% of a household budget. But a Labor Department study found fewer than 50 American counties where a family earning the median household income could obtain child care at an “ affordable ” price.

There’s also a connection between the cost of child care and the number of mothers working: a 10% increase in the median price of child care was associated with a 1% drop in the maternal workforce, the Labor Department found.

In Birmingham, Alabama, single mother Adriane Burnett takes home about $2,800 a month as a customer service representative for a manufacturing company. She spends more than a third of that on care for her 3-year-old.

In October, that child aged out of a program that qualified the family of three for child care subsidies. So she took on more work, delivering food for DoorDash and Uber Eats. To make the deliveries possible, her 14-year-old has to babysit.

Even so, Burnett had to file for bankruptcy and forfeit her car because she was behind on payments. She is borrowing her father’s car to continue her delivery gigs. The financial stress and guilt over missing time with her kids have affected her health, Burnett said. She has had panic attacks and has fainted at work.

“My kids need me,” Burnett said, “but I also have to work.”

Even for parents who can afford child care, searching for it — and paying for it — consumes reams of time and energy.

When Daizha Rioland was five months pregnant with her first child, she posted in a Facebook group for Dallas moms that she was looking for child care. Several warned she was already behind if she wasn’t on any wait lists. Rioland, who has a bachelor’s degree and works in communications for a nonprofit, wanted a racially diverse program with a strong curriculum.

While her daughter remained on wait lists, Rioland’s parents stepped in to care for her. Finally, her daughter reached the top of a waiting list — at 18 months old. The tuition was so high she could only attend part-time. Rioland got her second daughter on waiting lists long before she was born, and she now attends a center Rioland trusts.

“I’ve grown up in Dallas. I see what happens when you’re not afforded the luxury of high-quality education,” said Rioland, who is Black. “For my daughters, that’s not going to be the case.”

Slemp still sometimes wonders how she ended up staying at home with her son – time she cherishes but also finds disorienting. She thought she was doing well. After stints at a water park and a call center, her state job seemed like a step toward financial stability. How could it be so hard to maintain her career, when everything seemed to be going right?

“Our country is doing nothing to try to help fill that gap,” Slemp said. As a parent, “we’re supposed to keep the population going, and they’re not giving us a chance to provide for our kids to be able to do that.”

___

Carly Flandro of Idaho Education News, Valeria Olivares of The Dallas Morning News and Alaina Bookman of AL.com contributed to this report. Balingit reported from Washington, D.C., and Lurye from New Orleans. 

This series on how the child care crisis affects working parents — with a focus on solutions — is produced by the Education Reporting Collaborative, a coalition of eight newsrooms, including AL.com, The Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, The Hechinger Report, Idaho Education News, The Post & Courier, and The Seattle Times.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Woodbury senator broke in to stepmother’s home for father’s ashes, charges say

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A Minnesota state senator from Woodbury faces a felony burglary charge after authorities say she broke into her stepmother’s Detroit lakes Minnesota home to retrieve her late father’s ashes and other sentimental items.

Nicole Mitchell, 49, a DFL lawmaker from Woodbury was arrested early Monday, April 22, 2024 after police in Detroit Lakes were called to a home for a burglary.  (Courtesy of the Becker County Sheriff’s Office)

Sen. Nicole Mitchell, a Democratic-Farmer-Labor lawmaker, was arrested early Monday morning after police found her inside the home, according to charging documents filed Tuesday in Becker County District Court.

Charges say the senator told arresting officers her father had recently died and her stepmother had stopped communicating with family members, and that she wanted her late father’s ashes, and belongings including pictures, a flannel shirt, and other items of sentimental value.

Public records and an obituary posted by a Detroit Lakes funeral home show that Mitchell’s father, who died last month, and stepmother lived on the same block of the same road in Detroit Lakes as where the senator was arrested.

According to charges:

At around 4:45 a.m. Monday, Detroit Lakes police responded to a 911 call from a woman reporting a burglary of her home in the 700 block of Granger Road in Detroit Lakes. When officers arrived, they searched the house and found a person inside.

Officers then arrested Mitchell, 49, who while being detained told the stepmother “something to the effect of” she was “just trying to get a couple of my dad’s things because you wouldn’t talk to me anymore.”

The senator was dressed in all-black clothing and was wearing a black hat. Officers also discovered a flashlight in a sock covering which court documents said appeared to be a modification to reduce the amount of light that it would emit.

Mitchell told police she had made the roughly 200-mile drive from Woodbury to Detroit Lakes starting at around 1 a.m. early Sunday morning, court documents said. She admitted to entering her stepmother’s home through a basement window where she had left a backpack containing her drivers’ license, two laptop computers and a cell phone.

“Clearly I’m not good at this,” Mitchell allegedly told officers, later adding she knew “she did something bad.”

Mitchell was booked into the Becker County jail early Monday morning on suspicion of first-degree burglary. She was scheduled to make her first appearance in court at 11 a.m. Tuesday.

First-degree burglary is a felony offense with a minimum punishment of six months in jail or a county workhouse, a maximum of 20 years imprisonment, a $35,000 fine, or both.

Becker County Brian McDonald could not immediately be reached for comment.

DFLers have 34 seats in the Senate, compared with the 33 held by Republicans. If Mitchell can’t return to the Capitol, Democrats may have trouble passing partisan legislation between now and the end of session later next month.

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